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Monday, 29 July 2013

Again Action Max Eyeliner pencils: swatches

Hi lovelies,

this week the blog has been taken over by Lilly pretty much :) and also by Action. That's maybe because it's summer and our budgets are running especially low. Coming in the holiday jobs to get the funds up. Lilly and I have been at it for 2 weeks and for me (and I think for Lilly too) it have been very exhausting ones with the high temps of 39 degrees Celsius in the shade!

I still have a small stock of pics and this post I promised when I posted the haul.
Swatches!!!

First up a reminder what it was all about:

These Eye pencils come in a 3 pack and you can get them in lots of different colour combinations. I went for the brown-black one. Just because brown is what I use most and love and a black pencil always comes in handy.

I've had Max eye pencils before.I bought a 2 pack years ago (brown-black, see the pattern..) and loved them. They were so amazingly pigmeted and so easy to use. I used my brown one so much (over half way) until it kind of went annoying on me. I would sharpen it and the tip would fall of or break or the product would go on so thick I would need to sharpen it again after 2 uses. Also the wood of the pencil tended to be prickly. So it went to the back shelf for a while.

When I was in Action and saw these I thought I would give them a try again. At 0.89 euros for 3 no biggie and if they went all annoying again I could always pick up an other set.

This is what they look like. Not bad right? Form left to right the lightly gold brown, dark brown and black. These don't really have names as both the left and middle one are called brown. I've also smudged them with the little rubber that is on the other end of the pencil. Those are pretty hard and prickly so I wouldn't recommend using them on your eyes.

I really love the gold toned brown, it's such a lovely shade and not something I have seen before, and absolutely not at this price.

So why am I not over the moon with these?

Left old max pencil, right the new one

This is why. On first application I already noticed something was off and I went to fetch my old Max pencil for comparison. And look the definitly are not the same the fomula is very different indeed. The lovely creamy texture of the old one ( on the left) has dissapeared and also they aren't as pigmented. The colour has also changed. The new one is slightly more yellow which is not really my cup of tea ( honestly this is not a big deal. The gold toned one more than makes up for this).

You can also see the new one doesn't apply as evenly as the old one. True the old one is a wider line, but that's because I neglected to sharpen it before I did the swatches. The old one also smudges nicer.

I wanted to take a picture of my old one an new one but the old one is a bit to mangled (lid broken, short, stumpy, some of the paint came off. Remember I really love(d) the thing ) but essentially they look exactly the same.

If I hadn't know how good the old ones were this might have been more of a glowing review. Don't get me wrong they are still pretty good, even better than some of my essence and Yves Rocher ones but still I'm a little bit sad they aren't as good anymore as the used to. Other wise I would probably only ever use these. (Besides the occasional gel line or calligraphic from Cartice of course)

Overall conclusion: pretty awesome pencils especially if you consider the price! But if any at Max Make up read this: go back to the old formula and you guys will be my eyeliner gods!

Have you guys have seen a product you loved so much change for the worse? (Essence I'm looking at you)

As I've notice our readers are from all over, what are your country's budget brands and are they any good?